


The Dead Struggle With Saying Hello Sometimes

by TheTartWitch



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Warm Bodies (2013)
Genre: A loves Kevin, Agender Ronan, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Aromantic A, Asexual A, Daemons don't disappear, F/M, Gen, M has a very manly man crush on Nora, M/M, Major Character Death is really only Major to A, One-Shot Collection, Other, Perry isn't eaten AU, Zombies, and become Beasts, but not like that, most of my characters are OCs, sort of, they just sort of fade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 17:43:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8111533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTartWitch/pseuds/TheTartWitch
Summary: A's never felt so alive.





	1. A/Kevin

A doesn’t remember much anymore. He’s not even sure that’s really his name; the last time someone addressed him was years ago, probably. Zombies don’t talk to each other, really, but occasionally his Ronan will brush the fur on another Corpse’s Beast and there’ll be a sort-of conversation, usually composed mostly of grunts and high-pitched wheezing.

And raids. He remembers the raids on the airport, with groups of humans rushing the terminals and destroying the peacefully-shambling calm in a sort of last-ditch effort to wipe out the threat. And yeah, he gets where they’re coming from (plague of the undead eating your family? Can’t really miss that, especially when you _are_ the zombie) but really? They even got C, the old woman with the kitty frock who hadn’t moved from her seat in the waiting area for years. She was practically harmless. Her Bina was a small gecko on her knee, faded and washed-out and staring blankly into space with her.

But then, after years of this, the raids changed, became geared towards saving the Corpses instead of killing them off. He knew it had been triggered by R, that sly devil, with his Miri who always hovered between Corpse-grey and her natural blue-violet, blending the two. He’d seen her before the other had left: she’d glowed, eyes bleeding back to amber, wings quicker than they’d been in years, since her boy had died. A smirked a little, unable to move his mouth much what with the scars, but Ronan had stopped and stared before rearing back on his paws and roaring at the Boneys in defiance. They’d snuck into the back of the ragtag band and kept an eye on the fringes, wary of Boneys and falling into old habits, _Living_ habits.

At the gates, in the Living-city, he is shuffled to the edge of a campfire with the others. Soldiers are staring at them, at Ronan’s massive fuzzy grey snow leopard body slinking around his legs with his ice-blue eyes peering back, at M’s Cata’s fennec fox form blushing slowly with color, at R’s little Miri and her lovely dusky feathers and the way she’s preening on his shoulders, so proud of herself and her regained speed. One approaches, a loping, wary hound beside him.

“Hi,” he says. A stares at him, uncomfortable. It’s been a long time, conversation-wise. “My name’s Kevin. Do you remember yours?”

“A,” says A, watching quietly as Ronan tries to remember the daemon pleasantries Beasts have all forgotten. “Ronan,” he adds, pointing. Kevin nods a little, eyes measuring him silently.

“Did you realize,” says Kevin slowly, “that you were standing at attention? Maybe you were in the military.” A’s considered this. His dreams are of two boys, their eyes laughing as they try to copy something he’s doing, something to do with self-defence. One is named Lionel and the other is Lyle, and they had never gotten old enough for their daemons, Kita and Bascus, to settle. Not of the military, but then, maybe he hadn’t thought that mattered as much as his boys.

He’d loved them, enough to track down the couple who’d murdered them and get himself sent to the nearby jail for their deaths.

He realizes he’s been too silent, that Kevin is inching away, but Ronan bites his ear.

“Maybe,” says Ronan, voice scratchy and torn but there, and Kevin’s greyhound jerks a little.

“You can talk?” The daemon sounds way too excited, but Ronan licks his hide and ignores the dog. He’s always had a thing against trusting dogs; the old rivalry running deep, apparently. The dog looks disappointed.

A is going to say something, offer a condolence, but it’s been too long and he’s lost and R is coming back and asking for volunteers to meet people and help get everything settled and he’s standing and raising his hand.

And Kevin watches him go.

A senses possibilities, in that single stare and the way the hound stares after Ronan with an expression like longing.


	2. Don't Kill Perry AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> R's not sure what this feeling is.

R’s not really feeling hungry that day. Miri’s trying to enjoy the breeze through her feathers from on his shoulder, what with them wilting off constantly, but she’s not having much luck. They’re in an average-sized group that day; R, M, a woman in a hoodie, a very ‘traditional’-looking zombie, and A (who rarely goes out on hunting-shambles, so that’s probably a sign). R had only suggested eating to M so they could  _ do  _ something outside the airport, but groups tended to get bigger when others learned you were going out.

Cata had stepped a few feet away, leading them quietly, when suddenly her ears pricked in concentration. R sniffed: definitely Living nearby. 

Miri trilled a little, or tried to; it came out as a wet gurgle, which was just  _ wrong  _ coming from a  _ bird _ , but she made it work somehow. Cata huffed a bit.

It was a pharmacy, he thought. Surprisingly enough it hadn’t been raided yet by Living. 

It started the moment he got through the door, staring into the eyes of a Living boy holding a gun. The boy’s angry-looking wolf prowled at him, trying to attack but unwilling to really get close. Behind R, A was making some sort of crooning noise to a boy crouched in the corner, shuddering. A’s Ronan was curling gently around the boy’s greyhound, licking around its ears. The woman in a hoodie snapped at them and tried to get closer, but A tackled her with a roar. R stopped to watch, noting that M was doing so as well, but Traditional was still going after a Living girl with a braid. “Nora!” shouted the other one, leaping to her defence, but R’s eyes didn’t leave A’s form.

After an odd dull wet noise, A rose from the floor and padded back to Greyhound Boy, self-satisfied. The woman’s raccoon fizzled out on the cracked linoleum. 

“Safe,” R pointed out to the boy with the wolf, trying to sort this out in his head. “Living… city?” He asked, gesturing at the Living around them. Cata had gotten her jaws around Traditional’s little snake and had delivered the death blow, leaving Traditional to collapse.

“Mu..tiny!” M protested, pointing at A wildly. His eyebrows looked like they were growing back in, somehow. R shrugged. 

“His,” he said sheepishly, then motioned to the boy with the wolf. “City?” 

M growled. “You...ass!” He growled some more, huffing and standing over the two girls, trying heartily to ignore the way A was steadfastedly attempting some cuddles with his greyhound boy, and finally sighed an agreement. 

Wolf Boy waved his gun threateningly. “What the hell is going on here?”

R reached up to gently help him off the countertop. “You…” he began, searching for the words, “go… home? To city, with...walls.” He pointed at himself. “R.”

“Perry,” the boy said warily, shuffling his feet and staring as Miri attempted happy cheeps. “You wanna go to the City?”

“Oh, god,” said one of the girls, “we’re gonna die, why’s it  _ talking _ , oh god--”

“Shh, Nora, shut up,” said the other, but her eyes never left the three Corpses. “Perry, what’s going on here?!”

A’s boy warbled something as A hugged him. “Help,” he meeped to Perry desperately.

“Let’s… go,” said R encouragingly, ignoring the protests (because he was a  _ cheerful and energetic dead guy, okay _ ), and M and A helped their Living off the linoleum and started them walking. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perry: * (grey wolf)  
> Julie: * (grey housecat - American shorthair)  
> Nora: * (horned owl)  
> Kevin: Ephe (greyhound)  
> M: Cata (fennec fox)  
> R: Miri (hummingbird)  
> A: Ronan (snow leopard)


	3. Love doesn't mean Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A's not going to fall apart by himself. He is the pottery and the glue to hold it all together, and Loving someone doesn't have to mean admitting anymore than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A is asexual and aromantic, which I'm hoping is made obvious by this chapter. He feels that he is very close to Kevin, and that he likes Kevin, but he does not feel that this makes him in any way different from how he was when he loved his twin sons. I don't know how to explain this, really, but feel free to ask questions in the comments or just let me know if you commiserate! :)

The Corpses are settling pretty well into their tent camp in the corner of the compound, but there have been incidents: Ronan discovering small Living children playing pranks on those who still can’t remember quite who they were yet and teaching them a lesson, men heckling Dead women or smaller men, women harassing the other Living who cook for the Dead and help them find their ways. All of these can be taken care of, but there’s a problem.

Some of the Dead are falling in love with the Living, but they’re not being loved back. It’s causing rifts to form; Corpses who don’t understand how to deal with their feelings, or Corpses meeting old family members and realizing they don’t know if they can dredge up those old feelings anymore. A refuses to take a side. Kevin’s aware of his feelings; their first meeting kind of made it impossible not to be, but A’s getting the feeling Ronan’s behavior is confusing him. 

The other Dead who’ve fallen in love have been noticeably separate from their humans, fawning over their partner’s daemon a disturbing distance away, though the feelings between them appear to be the same. It’s reminiscent of the old stories about witches’ daemons who could go anywhere without relying on their witch. 

A’s never been like that, and he won’t apologize. He laughs whenever Miri flits just a smidgen too far from R and catches the eyes of several amazed soldiers, and watches the way their grip on their own daemons tightens instinctively. Ronan will let the smaller daemons of Corpses to huddle in his fur on cold nights, since their people are still working on recovering their body heat, but A doesn’t think he could let a human get that close to himself. Even with the boys, before, he’d adopted. They’d been small, and young, and loved him without expecting overly-familiar touches or any of that nonsense adults seemed to want from him, so he’d kept them close and let them under his skin. And then they were gone, so quick he’d blinked and missed it.

Sometimes he’ll go on patrol with the Wall soldiers, spotting the recovering Dead from the still-infected. Ronan often chooses to stay close, unless another Corpse comes along, confused and slower than the Living, simply because they’ve always been that way.

( _ “Someday,” his professor in high school had said, looking at him with pity, “you’ll find the one who completes you, too, A-” and A had thought, unmeaning and oddly insulted at the insinuation that he wasn’t whole, wasn’t real, ‘but isn’t being human walking beside your daemon and knowing that you are the only one with your daemon? Why does someone else get to choose what makes me whole?’ _ )

He knows Kevin will expect something more, but despite that alluring, magnetic pull between them, A will never give more than he has ever felt comfortable giving. Love doesn’t have to be romantic or sexual, and A might love Kevin but he’s not  _ absorbed  _ by it. His love for Kevin is the same he felt for Lionel and Lyle, or how he feels for Ronan: family. Protectiveness. Understanding. 

But A’s never felt cracked or broken before, and Kevin’s not going to make him start.


	4. General Stuff/Filler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Children are waking up, too.

I

t isn’t long before the zombies have taken to life in the compound as though they’ve always been there, with a few notable exceptions.

For example, when the scouting teams brought back other recovering Dead, they were simply enveloped into the fold, regardless of who they were or who they might have been, but new humans were often met with outright suspicion and curiosity, and a Corpse could be seen within a block of almost all their favorite Living until A had vetted the new human on Dead protocols. He seemed to almost enjoy teaching the others about a Corpse’s instincts and why they behaved the way they did. 

For instance: not all Dead have progressed to sleeping yet. Some continued to huddle in clusters like they had at the airport, unable to produce body heat but still trying to get warm or find physical contact. So coming up to sleeping huddle of Corpses you’re unfamiliar with is a bad idea, for one because they don’t know you, and that’s dangerous with any wild animal, and two, because if they’re still huddling they’re not ready to go around meeting people casually just yet, so you  _ really  _ don’t want to be getting in their space. 

Also, the hunting around the compound had to go down a bit after a soldier shot a Corpse’s vulture daemon out of the sky on habit, and they’d all had to listen to the man’s Living brother’s wailing when his brother just keeled over, truly dead. There’d been a funeral, which jogged a ton of memories for Corpses of before the Fall. 

On one evening, A was called to the wall by some soldiers after they found a pair of kids sitting quietly outside the wall, their blue-grey kittens wrestling in the dusty earth as a counterpoint to their Corpses’ stillness. They stare blankly at A as he approaches (he’s quick today; getting faster in this new age), and Ronan sits and shuffles a bit to stand over the kittens protectively. 

“Well?” says one of the soldiers. “Are they waking up?” 

The girl’s dress is crusted with bloody dirt and the boy’s face looks permanently mangled; he touches a hand to it every few seconds, looking as close to shocked at the pain as any recovering Dead can. Their eyes light up at the sight of A and Kevin standing so close and they stand. 

“Mee...na,” says the boy, pointing with the two fingers on his right hand at the girl. Kevin winces a little beside A, familiar with how brutal humanity is and how much the boy is going to be hurting later, when blood pumps through his body again and regrows the important bits, but A doesn’t. He’s desensitized, Ronan has told him.

What the hell. He was Dead for years, eating people’s brains and living in an airport of homeless Corpses. Cut him some slack.

The girl’s name turns out to be Meena, but the boy’s only managed to grasp the W of his own name. She’s further along than him, already growing scabs over her bullet wounds and speaking a little better, so she almost gets sent to a new tent, one for adoptions and the like, but they both disagree vehemently when this comes up. They’ve made it this far together, they’ll keep going together. 

He’s their de facto guardian for now, meaning when someone’s got a complaint about his zombie kids they bring it to him instead of management, and it’s reminding him painfully of his own brats. He supposes that’s alright though; he’s grudgingly glad they didn’t live long enough to see the birth of a new kind of world, one they wouldn’t have made it through.

He supposes one day he’ll recover enough to actually get some more brats, ones that he can properly call his. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meena & W: * & * (unsettled)

**Author's Note:**

> To keep things straight:  
> A: Ronan (snow leopard)  
> R: Miri (hummingbird)  
> Kevin: * (greyhound)  
> C: Bina (gecko)  
> M: Cata (fennec fox)  
> Lionel & Lyle: Kita & Bascus (unsettled)


End file.
